If several files are to be copied
which have similar names to another directory, Meta characters (also
know as wild cards) can used to accomplish it without repetitively
having to run the copy command and re-type all those similar files names.
Meta characters are similar to wild cards in the Windows or DOS environment
but have significant additional capabilities.

Table 17
shows the available Meta character choices that exist in Linux.

Table 17: Linux Meta Characters and Functions

Meta Character

Meaning

?

One character

*

Zero or more
characters

[abcd]

Any character
in set

[0-9]

Any character
in range

[^123]

Any character
not in set

Ranges in Linux

A caution about setting up proper ranges: remember that the hex ASCII values for the characters A through Z are not sequential to the characters a through z or the numbers 0 through 9, as a result you can not use the forms [A-z] or [a-Z] to match all upper and lower case characters. The correct way to do this would be [A-Za-z] or to match all upper and lower case characters and the numbers 0 through 9 you use [A-Za-z0-9]. Other forms or reversing the sequence i.e. z-a or 9-0 will yield unpredictable results.

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